Top all-time · #5104
Procedural World
Personal blog · procworld.blogspot.comprogramminggames
Procedural World is a personal blog at procworld.blogspot.com about programming and games. Since 2011, 15 different Hacker News readers have linked it 22 times, most often “Procedural World: Space Colonization”. The last post was in 2019, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (9) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
Miguel Cepero's blog on building a voxel-based procedural world engine (Voxel Farm), with posts on terrain, cave, city and architecture generation. HN readers cite it as a deep source on procedural generation.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 9 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Following one man's task of building a virtual world from the comfort of his pajamas. Discusses Procedural Terrain, Vegetation and Architecture generation. Also OpenCL, Voxels and Computer Graphics in general.
Most-linked posts?
- /3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2013-12-09
- /2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2014-03-18
- Procedural World: Space Colonization2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-07-09
What Hacker News says?
Why do people assume that voxels and polygons don't play well together? There are voxel engines now that store world data using voxels while what the player actually sees is polygons based on that voxel data. I'm reminded of one guy's side project[1] that accomplishes exactly that. [1] http://procworld.blogspot.com/2012/12/videos-of-caves-and-bu...
Comment linking /2012/12/videos-of-caves-and-buildings.html
on “Pixar's Chris Horne Sheds New Light on Monsters University”Submitted If you were the last person in the world, would you build a parser? as a story · 17 points
HN discussionWhat you say is very true. Maybe I should have said "intermediate" tutorials. Even though the problem area is so deep and complex there have been astonishing engines produced by very small teams, such as: * http://procworld.blogspot.com/ which is a voxel-based rendering engine mostly developed by one person * http://the-witness.net/ which is a game with a custom engine developed by a small team and features many rea…
Comment linking /
on “Learning how to write a 3D engine from scratch in C#, TypeScript or JavaScript (2013)”Submitted Procedural World: Space Colonization as a story · 2 points
HN discussionYou may want to check out Everquest Next. I think it would be fair to say that EQN is very close to a completely voxelized environment and at least mostly procedural. There is a great deal of curated content as well, but it seems like they are working on sourcing lots of that from players. The voxelized environment in EQN is based on Miguel Cepero's work. I believe they in fact hired him. I have been reading his blo…
Comment linking /
on “Exploring No Man’s Sky, A Computer Game Forged by Algorithms”Submitted Your Euclideon Yearly Fix as a story · 2 points
HN discussionIf you like procedural generation check out [0]. His recent blog posts have been about his Minecraft-like voxel engine (currently being used for Everquest Landmark I believe) but he has a lot of great gems in his archives. Two recent articles about his language to randomly generate architecture, and two older ones about city generation: http://procworld.blogspot.com/2014/11/cantor-city.html http://procworld.blogspot…
Comment linking /
on “Procedural City Generation”Submitted A trip to the Voxel Farm as a story · 2 points
HN discussionMiguel Cepero of the Procedural World blog said something similar: that with the increasing complexity of AAA games, the only way forward is to procedurally generate much of the content. He talks the talk, too: the engine that he's currently building can algorithmically create varied terrain and architecture while still allowing you to manipulate the game world like in Minecraft. http://procworld.blogspot.com Person…
Comment linking /
on “The Problem With Photorealism”Submitted Introduction to Wang Tiles as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThis is the basis of the Voxel Farm engine, which Miguel talks about in this early blog post: http://procworld.blogspot.com/2010/11/opencl-first-iteration...
Comment linking /2010/11/opencl-first-iteration.html
on “Metaballs and Marching Squares”Submitted Get Voxel Farm as a story · 1 points
HN discussionEvery once in a while, I've been reading the articles in this interesting blog[1] that covers various topics on procedural world generation. I've found that some of the articles (like, for example, this one[2] covering the creation of vegetation using space colonization instead of L-systems) are very educating. [1] http://procworld.blogspot.com/ [2] http://procworld.blogspot.com/2011/02/space-colonization.htm...
Comment linking /2011/02/space-colonization.html
on “Procedural Content Generation in Games”Submitted Real men don't draw buildings, they write them as a story · 1 points
HN discussionThe Procedural World blog — about the development of a complex procedural-generation-centric engine and development tool — is quite a read: http://procworld.blogspot.com
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Good tech blogs to read”Submitted Introducing Voxel Studio as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI don't know what tech No Man's Sky is using, but Voxel Farm[0] does something very similar (it's being used in Everquest Next and StarForge among other things). However, instead of marching cubes it uses dual contouring which produces nicer results. Also, it was made by one guy. His blog is amazing: http://procworld.blogspot.com/ [0] http://voxelfarm.com/vfweb/index.html
Comment linking /
on “Generating Complex Procedural Terrains Using the GPU (2008)”